The Adventures under Ground• were written out by hand and illustrated by the author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), between 1862 and 1864 for presentation in manuscript as a Christmas gift to Alice Liddell’s mother. Alice Liddell was the ten-year-old girl to whom Dodgson is said to have extemporized the nucleus of the “Alice” story while boating on the Thames on the afternoon of July 4, 1862.
In 1863, friends who had read Alice’s Adventures under Ground• persuaded Dodgson to publish his story. He expanded the 18,000 word original to the 35,000 word final version, changed the name to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland•, and saw the first edition published in 1865 by Macmillan of London.
—from the Dolphin Book edition• notes
Illustrations in Alice’s Adventures under Ground by Lewis Carroll. Illustrations in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, including the title graphic on this page, by Sir John Tenniel.
The Cheshire Cat
According to Ivor Smullen in the July 1993 Omni (p. 76), a possible inspiration for the Cheshire cat exists in St. Peter’s Church, Croft, County Durham, where Dodgson’s father preached for twenty-four years. There is a “crude stone carving” of a cat on a panel wall. If you kneel before the cat, it gradually disappears until all that remains is the smile, “which stretches almost from ear to ear”.
- Alice’s Adventures under Ground
- Alice’s Adventures under Ground is the original, shorter work presented to Alice’s mother as a gift. It’s a fascinating “condensation” of the Alice in Wonderland story.
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- “All in the golden afternoon, full leisurely we glide.”
- Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There
- The book that spawned Humpty Dumpty, innumerable literary chess games, and of course Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
More Information
- Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass• (hardcover)
- A nice collection of both of the popular Alice books, with the original artwork. (Lewis Carroll)
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass• (paperback)
- This book has both pictures and conversations, and it’s a nice size to keep handy if you fall down any holes. (Lewis Carroll)
- Alice’s Adventures under Ground• (paperback)
- This fascinating book is a facsimile of Carroll’s first published version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is shorter than the more widely published version: some scenes were later added, and other scenes were expanded, for the later version. (Lewis Carroll)
- The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition• (hardcover)
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This fantastic book contains the text to both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. But it also contains a side-bar on many pages filled with notes about what phrases meant at the time Dodgson wrote them, and sometimes what Tenniel’s drawings depict. Would you recognize an eel-trap if you saw one today?
Gardner also reproduces the originals of poems that Dodgson satired, such as the much more boring originals of “Speak roughly to your little boy” and “You are old, father William”. (Martin Gardner)
Related Pages
Organized into web format by Jerry Stratton.